Total pages in book: 92
Estimated words: 88326 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 442(@200wpm)___ 353(@250wpm)___ 294(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88326 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 442(@200wpm)___ 353(@250wpm)___ 294(@300wpm)
A smile entered his eyes as he reached for me. “Everything’s alright.” He squeezed me and brushed a kiss across my forehead. “Relax.”
I pulled away so I could look him over, head to toe. I saw no sign of injury.
“I said not a scratch, didn’t I?” he asked with his typical smirk.
“What happened?”
He turned toward the kitchen. “I’m starving and need a drink first.”
I joined him in the kitchen and opened the fridge. “I have some leftover pasta from lunch yesterday.”
“I’ll take it.” He opened the cabinet, grabbed a big bottle, and poured himself a glass of scotch. He added a couple of ice cubes before he took it to the table.
I reheated his food and served it to him with a linen napkin and utensils.
He immediately started to scarf down his food across from me, eating the jumbo prawns with the pappardelle pasta.
I let him eat for a couple minutes, knowing how foul his mood could get when he was hungry. His body was probably crashing from the adrenaline dump he’d experienced. I knew exactly how that felt.
He wiped his mouth of the sauce. “It was a setup.”
“What does that mean?”
“Ciro called Don Russo under duress. Made it sound like a battle was about to take place, but he’d already been captured, along with the rest of his men and his family. I’m not sure what Icarus offered him to get him to comply, but whatever it was, it was a lie.”
“They’re dead, then?”
He nodded. “We did what we could, but we were outnumbered and fucked. Icarus laid his trap, and we walked right into it. I should have seen it coming, but I was following orders.”
“Did anyone in Cosa Nostra die?”
“Just a couple of injuries. We intended to run for it, but Icarus’s men—more like his militia—had us pinned down. Said he wanted to have a conversation, so I stepped forward and had that conversation.”
“Why you and not the don?” I blurted.
He shrugged. “In the moment kind of decision.”
“Wolfe.” I didn’t want my man needlessly risking his life for someone else.
“Trust me, I made the right decision. If it’d been Don Russo, I wouldn’t be here right now.”
“Then he shouldn’t be running Cosa Nostra.”
“Probably not, but that’s not up to me.”
When Don Russo told me that Wolfe should be the one running Cosa Nostra, it was clear he’d thought about it for a while. And now it was clear he wanted that transfer of power to happen sooner rather than later. “Then what happened?”
“We sat on two piece-of-shit chairs outside a warehouse on a farm…and talked.”
I stared at him across the table, watched him take a few more bites of my leftover food before he seemed finished.
“Icarus is a nutcase,” he said simply. “His motivations are unclear, which is why he’s so lethal. It seems like he plays the game just for the thrill of it.”
“Like you.”
“Not quite,” he said. “I don’t kill people for fun.” He pushed his empty plate aside then took a drink from his glass. “We had a long conversation, and he basically said we could yield to the Skull King and lose thirty percent of our profits—or he’ll kill us all. I said we were open to negotiation, and he obviously wasn’t.”
“And he just let you go?”
“Said he would give me time to reconsider. Said he would take down all the gangs one by one until Cosa Nostra is the last one standing. And then he’ll come for us next.”
“If he wants Cosa Nostra gone, why didn’t he just kill all of you, then?”
He stared at his drink for a moment before he gave a slow shrug. “Said he liked me.”
“He liked you?” I asked with slight incredulity.
“He respected me, is probably a better way of phrasing it.”
“What did you say to make him feel that way?”
“I didn’t show fear. Talked shit straight to his face. Didn’t cave to his demands.”
“But you’re making his job more difficult.”
He gave another shrug. “Everyone in this business appreciates a challenge. Appreciates that rush of adrenaline that brings you so close to death you appreciate life. I suspect he sees me as his equal and wants the game to last a little longer. I’d heard from multiple people that we’re similar…and we are.”
“He sounds like a psychopath.”
“As am I,” I said. “But you haven’t seen that side of me.”
“I think I have.”
A slight smirk moved on to his lips. “No, not really. The butcher doesn’t carve the meat in front of the customer.”
I remembered his wrath when he’d arrived at the house to save me in the shootout. Leo had mentioned what Wolfe had done to the men he’d captured, when he hung them from the tree on our property, the tree he told me not to look at. That seemed violent enough. “So, what now?”
“Pretty straightforward,” he said. “Kill Icarus before he kills us.”